The Wayward Novelist
by IAmToast24
Summary: Follow Ezra as he embarks on his journey to write a novel based on the disappearance of Alison Dilaurentis. Along the way he will face obstacles that ultimately force him to chose between writing a best seller and proving his love for a girl he never meant to fall for. AKA I'm trying to make his season 4 confession seem realistic (even though we all know it's not).


Ezra hadn't planned on meeting her like this. He had thought that he would meet her in school the next day, along with her three best friends. In fact, he had planned on it. But the girl two stools away at the local pub was most definitely the same girl he had seen in the pictures: the same artsy fashion, the same dark brown hair, except for the absence of the pink streak it held a year ago. Her name was Aria, he recalled. A pretty name for a pretty girl. But they were all pretty.

And all of them were liars.

Aria was looking at a flyer on the wall with a picture of a very beautiful blonde girl on it. Alison. The flyer described her features, where she was last seen, her current age. He'd thought she was much older when they had met. But she had that mysterious presence about her, one that made you want to believe every word she said. The girl knew how to tell a story, and she told so many that perhaps some of them became reality. Yet, the flyer didn't mention that, didn't mention anything that mattered. It only really told one story.

Alison Dilaurentis was missing.

Ezra couldn't help but study the expression on Aria's face: a mixture of sadness, regret, loss, and even a bit of fear. Anyone else might have wondered why Aria would be afraid, but not Ezra. He knew what Alison was like, how she could be. Getting on her wrong side was like walking straight into a tiger's cage. Perhaps Aria feared Alison. But more likely she feared the idea that Alison was truly gone.

Ezra could relate. Seeing Alison had never become serious, but when he'd heard about her disappearance, he'd been confused. Sure, Alison had always been mysterious, yet she'd never been a true mystery until then. He went back and forth, both wondering who could possibly want to hurt her and who she could've possibly hurt so much. So many questions filled his head. Was she still alive? Could she have been kidnapped? Did she run away? And, most importantly, why? He had to know the answers. He'd figured that her story, her real one, was much more complex than a pretty young girl gone missing.

But Ezra wasn't a cop or a detective. He had no reason to look into the truth, and no tools to help him do so. Still, he felt so strongly that Alison's voice could not be lost. He was an aspiring writer, after all. So he decided he would help her tell her story.

And that was how his novel began. He spent months researching Alison: her life, family, and friends. And when a teaching position opened up at Rosewood High, he applied for it. At many moments while he was vigorously searching for clues and tracking down leads, Ezra asked himself if this was worth it. He doubted both his ability to solve any part of Alison's mess and his strength of conviction. How far was he willing to go?

That was how he found himself sitting at a bar just a few seats away from a girl with more information than he was likely to get from hundreds of files, unable to decide what to do. He could ignore her and stick to his original plan, which was much safer, not to mention much easier. He'd never met or talked to anyone this close to his novel's subject. He wasn't sure what to say or if she'd be able to tell that he knew Alison. But he also understood that sometimes you have to take a few risks when it comes to telling a good story. He had to talk to Aria, had to see if he could get more information out of her.

He decided that he had to at least try.

"You okay over there?" Ezra asked Aria, trying to begin a conversation. Hopefully she'd talk about Alison.

"Yeah, I'm a bit jet lagged," Aria answered, seemingly caught off guard by his question. She flipped her hair up when she spoke and her eyes drifted away from the poster. "I just got back from Europe." Ezra knew that her family had gone away for a year after Alison's disappearance, but he didn't know where. He figured it wouldn't hurt to inquire about what she'd been doing for the past year.

"Where in Europe?" She finally looked over at him so that she could answer his question, her eyes casually locking with his.

"Iceland," she responded, nodding her head and pursing her lips. She had this air about her that he hadn't expected: a kind of maturity and sophistication that his research and Alison's tales could never do justice. Ezra found himself actually wanting to converse with Aria.

"I spent some time in Reykjavik before I went to Amsterdam." Aria finally turned toward him a bit, seemingly interested in the conversation. "Great city." She smiled, a delightful smile that lit up her entire face.

The conversation went on after that, Ezra learning that she liked the same music as he did and that she wanted to become an English teacher as well as a writer. He had so meticulously recorded facts and interactions, cut through the deceptions and lies. He had done his research perfectly.

But none of it could tell him that he would feel like this about Aria. What began as a mission to chat about Alison without giving himself away turned into flirting. And not "trying to seduce her to use her knowledge" flirting. Actual, mutual romantic interest. Ezra had never before in his life felt a spark as strong as this one upon just meeting a person. Time and time again he had to remind himself to not get too involved, that he couldn't, shouldn't be doing this. That she was a liar.

Still, Aria seemed so sincere. Not like Alison, whose facade was easily detected. With Alison, you knew she was lying about everything, that's what made her so interesting. She was a mystery. But Aria was not mysterious at all. Perhaps that was her most dangerous quality: wholehearted sincerity. With a face and a voice like Aria's, you could get away with murder.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop his heart from speeding up when she got close to him as they spoke. It didn't deter him from kissing her in the bathroom, his lips travelling up her neck to her soft ones. That night, he tried to record everything, down to the taste of her skin. _For research, of course_ , he told himself. But he was fooling no one. Turns out he wasn't a very good liar.

He knew Aria was, though, along with her friends. He needed to be careful, needed to take precautions while pursuing his novel's research. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd just complicated things much more than he'd intended. Part of him knew that he was falling for her, even while the rest of him refused the notion. He couldn't fall for her, he shouldn't. Both his job and his novel depended on it.

Falling in love with Aria Montgomery would surely ruin his life.


End file.
